


Jughead and FP

by palaces_outofparagraphs



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, Post 2x21, as in jughead is super hurt and fp tries really hard to comfort, fathers and sons and reunions and hurt and slowly slowly coming back together, fp taking care of his son the way he always should have, hurt/comfort as we said in the good old days, i cried while writing this!!! LOTS of sadness, me salvaging scraps from this dumpster fire of a show and writing tragedy about it, my boy, this show really out here tryna make me believe jughead is dead and i DONT ACCEPT IT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-05 20:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14626572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palaces_outofparagraphs/pseuds/palaces_outofparagraphs
Summary: FP carrying Jughead out of the woods, and everything that follows.





	1. Chapter 1

It was dark, and it was cold, and Jughead was cognizantly aware that he was shivering. The ground was wet, he could feel it under his cheek; but that wasn’t right - there was no reason the ground should be under his cheek.

Something had gone so, so wrong, and there was pain everywhere, in the way that made it the default, the only feeling, and so really, there was none of it. He didn’t feel any of it because there was too much of it; but at the same time, he felt it piercing and unforgiving in his arm. Something was very wrong with his arm. He was never going to move it again. He might never move again at all.

The ground was wet under his cheek, or maybe his cheek was wet, with blood or tears or both, and he didn’t know where he was, couldn’t remember what was happening, and there was a deep, awful yearning in his chest,

he wanted his  _ dad - _

he wanted to cry, to scream, but there wasn’t enough of him left to do it, and there was a vague echoing in his head, or maybe there was noise in the background, but it was like it wasn’t over, somehow - it was like there was more to come - like there was always going to be more to come - he wanted desperately to be home, he wanted to be writing, he wanted to be eating a burger at Tate’s, he wanted Betty - wanted her soft hands in his, wanted her to pull off his cap and string her fingers through his hair -

he remembered, vaguely, his fingers dialing her number and saying  _ i love you, i’ll always love you,  _ but he didn’t know why - that was good, though, at least she knew, at least she knew -

where was his cap? Where was he? It was too much energy to expend to even contemplate, and still rising in the back of his conscious was he had to get up, had to be alert, this wasn’t over, this might never end at all - 

he wanted to be playing video games with Archie, he wanted to be listening to Jellybean play guitar cross legged on his floor, he wanted his  _ dad - _

and then there was a roar of noise from somewhere far away, a roar that silenced all the other noise, there was yelling, it felt, vaguely, like childhood. There was more noise, more time, his cheek was still cold, or maybe it was warm, and there was pain everywhere so broad and deep that he couldn’t feel any of it, except in his arm. His arm, his arm was going to fall off. He was never going to be able to use his arm again. He was never going to be able to write again -

and then someone was holding him, someone was pulling him up off the ground, someone was swearing and muttering and there were hot tears on his face but they weren’t his -

against the wishes of every nerve in his body, he opened his eyes, and he saw, vaguely, through spotted vision and a haze of something that there shouldn’t be, his father’s face, screwed up and sobbing.

He exhaled, or he would have if there was anything left within him. Who the hell knew what was going on, where he was, or if he would ever move again, but his father was here, and he could hear, dimly, through what seemed to be a great, roaring din, and at the same time, deafening silence, murmurs over and over again, murmurs that felt, just as the yelling had, like childhood.

_ “It’ll be okay now, boy, it’ll be okay now. Don’t you worry, boy. You’re looked after now. Don’t you worry.” _

He felt into blissful, numb oblivion.

\--

He woke up to more darkness, steady beeping, crisp white sheets, white ceiling, white everything, his brain going a million miles per hour, panic pumping through his blood as it all came crashing back - the riots, the darkness,  _ Fangs,  _ there was a stab of pain in his chest - 

he couldn’t feel his arm, was too scared to look down, too scared to move, panicked like he’d never been before, where was he? What had he done? What had he  _ done? _

“Dad?” he called, the first thing he could think to say.

“I’m here - ” there was a rustling in the dark, banging of a chair, the familiar noise of FP cursing under his breath, and then a light flickering on, the room flooded with semi-brightness. “I’m here. Boy _. _ ”

Jughead had to blink a few times to focus, his vision still hazy from God knew what. His father’s face came into clairty in front of him. He was in a hospital. In the hospital.

“Dad?” His voice was still small. Part of him wanted to cry, but not in front of his father. “What - what happened?”

“Could be asking you the same thing,” said FP gruffly. He settled in a chair next to his hospital bed.

The Ghoulies, Hiram Lodge and his smirk, Penny Peabody and her rusty knife, giving himself up, giving himself up,  _ what good had it done - _

“Giving yourself up for Riverdale,” said FP, as if the memory coming back to him was spelled out clear across Jughead’s face. “I always knew you were the heroic type, boy. Never knew it would be catching up with you so soon.” 

Jughead exhaled, then cried out with the sharp pain that shot through his side. “What’s happened to me?” he whispered.

FP gave a sharp exhale, followed by a grunt of what might have been exhaustion. “Ghoulies got you pretty good,” he said. “Thirty of ‘em against one of you, and you survived, Jug. You made it. You’re gonna make it, hear?”

“What - what happened - what’s wrong with me?”

“Four broken ribs,” said FP ruefully. “Broken leg. Some missing teeth and a broken jaw, that’s why you can’t talk right. They wired it. Two black eyes and a concussion. Our old friend the snake charmer took a good hunk out of your arm, they thought they might have to amputate, but eight hours of surgery means they don’t, I guess. And you’ve been in a coma for two days and they kept saying you might not wake up and I said - ” he inhaled deeply, letting it out slow - “I said they don’t know  _ my boy. _ ”

The information trickled into Jughead’s mind slowly; none of it quite making sense to him. “Dad, how much is all this gonna cost?”

FP gave a shout of laughter and dropped his face into his hands, his shoulders shaking.

“D-dad?”

He looked up, and it was more shocking than anything that had happened yet to see the tears streaming down his father’s face. “I said they don’t know  _ my boy, _ ” said FP, his voice thick. “He’ll be up, I said. He’ll be up, and not even I knew he would be asking about the bills before he even got a chance to - ” he broke off, his voice shattering, and something like pride, something like gladness, swelled in Jug’s aching chest.

The Jones men were quiet for a few moments, the beeping that Jug realized was his heart monitor persisting through the night.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” said Jughead. “I’m sorry for doing it. I know it was stupid I just - I didn’t know what else - ”

“You don’t ever apologize to me again, boy,” said FP, and he rose from the chair, leaning down and giving Jughead what amounted to a hug, considering the bandages. “Jughead.” He swallowed, sitting back down, but still taking one of Jug’s hands, the one not encased in bandages, in his. “Jughead - I don’t say this enough.”

“Dad, I - ”

“No, be quiet, boy. I don’t say this enough, but you are - ” FP swallowed. “You are the best thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said clearly. “I haven’t accomplished a thing worth looking twice at, but having you is the proudest thing in my life. There is no one, nothing, more important to me, do you hear me? No one, and nothing. You were willing to lay down your whole damn self for this town, and I don’t know what kind of a father I’ve been for you to think that kind of responsibility lay with you.” There were still tears, tracking down his father’s face. “And next time you feel like you have to give your whole self up for this town, you call me.” His voice broke again. “And I’ll do it for you, you hear me? Anything you need, after this, I’m going to do it for you. You’ve never not made me proud, Jug. It’s time for me to - ”

“Dad,” said Jug. “Dad.”

“It’s time for me to return the damn favor, son. To return the damn favor.”

Maybe there were tears on his face too, now, or maybe this had all been a dream. “Dad,” said Jughead, wishing he could say what he needed to, but it had always been easier to write it down, and his jaw was very much wired. “I - ”

“Sleep now, Juggy.” FP reached over, turning the dim light off. “Sleep. And I’ll be here in the morning.”

And as Jughead fell slowly back into a sleep that he felt he’d never woken up from, he thought he felt his father’s hand pass ever so gently over his cheek, thought he heard him murmur, “I’m never not going to be here for you again, my son. Don’t you worry, boy. You’re looked after now.”

But then, it might have been a dream, or a memory.

\--


	2. Chapter 2

_ love love or whatever,  
_ _ take a number _

When Jughead woke up the next day, there was sunlight streaming in through the plastic blinds covering the hospital windows. His father was passed out asleep in a chair, one arm slung over the back of it, half-sagging off of it. He closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for the pain to flood in, - there was a memory etched in the back of his mind, of lying on the ground, feeling the blood and tears pool beneath his cheek, of knowing that there was never going to be a life without pain, after this.

It tentatively flooded towards him, towards his brain, as if his body as slowly remembering it existed. There was a definite dull ache in his left arm, but it was bound so tightly in bandages he could barely feel it - it was a suggestion of pain, a warning, pain that he would feel soon, but not quite. His side ached, and there was a sharpness with every natural inhale and exhale; he had never been quite so aware of his breathing. It was unpleasant but manageable. His jaw hurt a lot, too; and there was an awful dull post-dentist style pain in his teeth. Aside from that, there was a generic exhaustion throughout him. Pain and exhaustion so often bled into each other, and he was feeling both now.

And his brain hurt. His brain hurt, it was like producing every thought took an effort.

_ Well, idiot,  _ he thought, trying to roll over but stopped by the plethora of bandages,  _ remember that next time you hand yourself over to Hiram goddamn Lodge and an angry rival gang. _

But he had survived. It had been stupid, but what a story he had. He would tell Betty, and Betty would gasp and clutch her face and tears would streak down her soft porcelain cheeks, and she would yell at him to never do something so stupid ever again and she would hold him. And he would tell Archie the brutal, gory details - if he could remember them; he had a feeling they were lingering right on the edge of his subconscious, not quite lending themself to memory, because right now, if he let them in, it would shatter him. He would hold them at a distance, then, until he was ready to look at it. But Archie would curse under his breath and grin in spite of himself, “ _ damn,  _ Jug!” His stupid, affable righteousness and goodness shining through with indignation and fury -  _ “who in the hell do they think they  _ are? _ ” -  _ mingled with an awed sort of impressedness that, as long as Jughead could remember, he had felt for Archie.

And he would write and write and write all the chaos it had been, all the chaos to come. When he could move again, he would pour all of this into the best damn novel ever written.

He was lying in a hospital bed, the sunshine streaming in. He knew he had just woken up from a coma. He knew that there were miles and miles and miles ahead of him, healing and physical therapy and the kind of pain he was not prepared for, the kind of pain he had never, ever had to deal with before, the kind of pain he had never expected to prepare for.

But he was  _ alive. _ And he  _ wanted to be,  _ which was a strange feeling. The past year of his life had been like existing in a strange vacuum as things fell down, one by one; as he lost his mother, his sister, his father, his home, Archie, Riverdale. One by one by one, it was like everyone in his life pushed him further and further away from it. The town was falling to bits and pieces and smithereens around him, and so was his life, and he couldn’t remember wanting any of it - couldn’t remember wanting to live here, live anywhere, couldn’t remember feeling glad to be alive.

But now, lying in a hospital bed all of him aching, he knew how closely he had escaped, knew how seconds away he had been from nothingness at all, and in a peculiar way that escaped all sensibility, Jughead Jones was glad to be alive.

An alarm dinged once, and FP woke with a start across the room. “Jug,” he said, collecting himself, yawning enormously. “You’re up - oh, you were up last night.” He nodded, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “I told them,” he said, almost to himself, enormous self satisfaction across his face. “Told ‘em.”

“Yeah, you told em, Dad.” Jughead grinned, despite the universe. “They didn’t really think I wasn’t about to  _ wake up. _ ”

“I told em,” said FP, rising and crossing the room, sitting on the edge of Jughead’s bed, “my son’s got too many people to yell at. Too much hell to raise.” He grinned, unholy. “Too much hell to raise, right, boy?”

“Right, Dad.” Jughead stretched, grimacing. “I feel like the gates of hell didn’t let me escape without a fight, though.”

“There he is,” said FP, clapping his hand on the bed next to him, apparently to compensate for not being able to thwack his son. “How you feeling?”

“Like death,” said Jug wryly, and FP laughed. There was a looseness, a rawness, a realness to his father he had never seen before.

He had seen it last night, sort of.

“Dad, about last night - ”

“Don’t have to say nothing, Jug.”

“But Dad - ”

“We both know,” said FP. “We both know. I know you like to talk - ”

“ - hey!”

“But there’s nothing that needs to be said, hear?” He lay a hand, briefly, on Jughead’s. “Nothing that needs to be said.”

Jughead could feel tears pricking at his eyes, but he blinked them back. The words his father had said still felt almost like a dream, but they happened. His father had told him, sometime in the middle of the night in between listing all the broken things about him, that he was the best thing he had done in his life. That he loved him. That he was going to be there for him, now, from now on. 

_ Do you really believe that?  _ some bitter, quiet part of him murmured. Some part of him that loved his father, of course he did, all of him, every part of him loved his father; but that had committed to memory all the dark parts: the screaming fights in the middle of the night that left him cupping his hands over Jellybean’s hands; the empty refrigerator and the ache of hunger that was too familiar in his eight year old chest; the beer bottles filling up the garbage can until it overflowed; the dull background roar of the television with FP passed out in front of it; all of the unsigned permission slips and the too small sweaters and the nights he slept at Archie’s and cried into his pillow at the thought of having to go home.  _ Do you really believe that?  _ The parts of Jughad that held onto the hurt, the misery, the empty; that refused to yield that one source of quiet self-preservation - you couldn’t be let down if you never expected anything.

But he looked at FP now, his hand on his on the hospital bed, and thought of other days. The award he’d won for poetry in seventh grade (Reggie had called him words he’d only read in books up till then and Jason Blossom had shoved him into the metal picket fence so hard he’d cut his shoulder on the edge and Archie had punched Reggie square in the face and Betty had called Jason a brutal, brainless Neanderthal and helped Jughead up, finding his hat for him), and FP in the front row at the ceremony, clapping, yelling on his feet, taking the whole family out for burgers to celebrate his son. The week in eighth grade Jughead came home with three black eyes in a row and FP had cut to the chase, marching straight to Reggie Mantle’s house and not quite threatening his father with what would happen if he didn’t sort out his son. The flowers he bought every year on his mother’s birthday (give or take a day), the endless guitar picks he brought home for Jellybean. The nights, even when he was well older than he would have admitted, that Jughead was screaming in his sleep and his father had come in, the only one capable of chasing away the nightmares. 

FP in a prison cell, looking up at him with sorry dark scared eyes. FP wearing a bow tie and hat, clearing up after Cheryl Blossom, determined to hold down this job. FP taking the stupid mistake he’d made with Penny Peabody onto shoulders. The night Betty told him what she and Alice had done - running home, knowing his father would fix it, and he had. FP and him on the roof with burgers,  _ I won’t tell anyone you broke your hunger strike. _

Who his dad had been and who his dad were now were still the same man, he knew. But he knew also that for every dark shade of his father, for every mistake, for every loss, for every broken promise, there were a dozen days where he had tried to give him everything.

He relaxed into the bed, much as it hurt his ribs to breathe. FP was going to take care of him now. Nothing in the world was assured and never would be, but FP would take care of him now.

“Nothing that needs to be said,” echoed Jughead.  _ I love you, I trust you, please don’t let me down. _

FP grinned, then leaned down under the bed, proferring something. “Hey. I found, found this. It was - torn, but your girl, she washed it, patched it up. Good as new.”

It was his hat. FP handed it to him, and he squeezed it in his good hand. His father took the hat from him, carefully pushing it onto his head. 

“There you go. Good as new.”  _ I love you, you can trust me, I’ll never let you down again. _

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you read/reviewed the first chap, i love you forevermore<333  
> quote on top is by richard siken -- feels very jughead

**Author's Note:**

> Hi I'm back after straight up vanishing for a year, now with Riverdale fanfiction. I have four other pieces similar to this but they are all out of date now (followed the canon, as it may have been, for season 2) so let me Know if you're interested in reading them (all of them are about FP and someone else lmao because he's my MAN.)  
> Thanks for reading xxxx


End file.
